The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum: David Scanavino: Imperial Texture

Scanavino

David Scanavino: Imperial Texture Curated by Amy Smith-Stewart October 19, 2014, to April 5, 2015

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

David Scanavino: Imperial Texture

I’m not inventing; my ideas come from constantly investigating how things look.

–Ellsworth Kelly1 For more than a decade, David Scanavino has been exploring the ubiquitous vernacular of the institutional—the run of the mill, nondescript architectural features of pedestrian spaces that don’t stand out; the interiors of public schools, city libraries, state hospitals, and bureaucratic agencies; the routine classrooms, humdrum waiting rooms, drab corridors, and ordinary hallways where we stand, sit, pace, and hope for time to accelerate.

We are all connected through our daily patterns of collective ritual. Our school buildings are a parade of cinder block two-tone walls, cheerless linoleum floor tiles, analogue wall clocks seemingly running in sync with droning monotone, corridors lined with splintery wooden benches and beaten-up lockers marked with faded Sharpie love yous, rooms filled with grids of stiff metal chairs, and rigid Formica desks pocked with greying wads of chewed gum. They inform how we learn to adapt, conform, and operate as educated citizens. These impressional yet indistinguishable interiors are the impetus and inspiration for Scanavino’s sculptures, works on paper, installations, and wall-relief paintings.

Scanavino asks us to think about how we relate to built space, especially the uninteresting but unmistakable institutional places we (un)willingly occupy, as did the Anarchitecture group, co-founded in 1973 by Gordon Matta-Clark, before him. He transforms the architecturally “insignificant” and the seemingly inescapable into something seductive, something playful, something appealing, something unexpected. To do so, Scanavino marries 1920s de Stijl, with its preference for abstract reduction and primary colors, and 1960s Minimalism—in particular its employment of industrial materials and paired down forms—with 1990s “social practice.” Thereby, he activates space by using unassuming, cheap manufacturing supplies, in particular VCT (vinyl conformation tile), fashioning names like White Out, Cafe Latte and Kickin’ Kiwi. He uses plywood and MDF (medium-density fiberboard), preschool art supplies, vibrant construction paper, and Elmer’s Glue to forge a relationship with not only the viewer, the object, and the room, but to influence how the viewer actually moves around the objects in the room.

Scanavino graduated from Columbine High School, before it became an international headline; for him, it was just another sleepy middle-class Denver suburb. Two years prior to that ill-fated spring day in 1999, before the torrent of what was to become a national epidemic and a now-regular news flash—Terrorism in our schools!—Scanavino left Colorado for Providence, spending his undergraduate years at RISD making what he describes as “Hockney-inspired”2 figurative paintings. Shortly after completing his BFA, he moved to New Haven to begin graduate work at Yale’s painting department, then under the helm of Peter Halley.

In 1999 Scanavino returned to Columbine, and what he encountered there not only changed his thinking, but also influenced his first mature works. When Columbine reopened it had to make some real perceptual revisions, like moving the library, the hapless site of many of the deaths. As he toured the halls, Scanavino noticed that it seemed cheerier than he remembered. One singular shift stuck out: the floors. They had been replaced with a

Studio view of Imperial Texture panels in production, 2014 Courtesy of the artist and Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, New York

Now that everything has gone digital, flat, and streamlined in the wake of the iPhone, clocks, books, newspapers—even administrative waiting rooms (when was the last time you were at the DMV?)—have become unnecessary markers of a time that has permanently elapsed. But what does it mean when our most habit-forming environs change, shift, or even disappear?

Model for Imperial Texture (version 11), 2014 Courtesy of the artist and Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, New York

Scanavino’s first Armstrong4 VCT sculptures were grids plastered on found doors, favoring a monochrome spectrum of greys, blacks, and greens. These evolved in an architectonic direction as he introduced primary shapes erected from MDF—cubes and columns—which were soon followed by the wedge, a more charismatic geometric form selected for its implication of movement. These works, like Green Wedge (2006), were either free standing or hung directly on the wall, hovering just above one’s head, larger than body size. Not painting, sculpture, or object, they were reminiscent of what Donald Judd describes in his seminal essay, Specific Objects (1965), as “between that which is something of an object, a single thing, and that which is open and extended, more or less environmental.”5 From here, Scanavino began to experiment by incorporating the entire room, exhibiting his first floor piece in 2008. In several instances, he displayed VCT cubes and horizontal columns on wall-to-wall linoleum, generating a meta-interior designed with complementary objects that mimicked Minimalist furniture.

For The Aldrich, Scanavino debuts a new site-specific floor sculpture and a monumental wall relief, turning the South Gallery into both an experiential installation and engaging platform for interactivity. Imperial Texture (2014) spans the floor and scales four walls, making it feel as though the viewer has walked into a gigantic immersive abstract painting

Fabrication panel map of Imperial Texture, 2014 Courtesy of the artist and Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, New York

brighter, more-lively linoleum palette and a jazzier design.3 From that moment forward, Scanavino adopted this pervasive cheap floor covering as a signature material. He also began a series of large works on craft paper of stereotypic wood and metal frame classroom desks and round wall clocks in matte acrylic and polyurethane. Simple, bloblike shapes in blacks and blues that seem to float on the surface with funny titles like Dumb Desk (2005) and Construction (2005). The clock is a recurring motif, most notably in Untitled (clock) (2013), as an aqua resin cast inset into the wall in mirrored reverse, making time stand still.

or virtual video game. Using multicolored 1 x 1 foot linoleum tiles, Scanavino conceives what at first emerges as a dizzying arrangement, simulating pixel arrays in an enlarged, compressed jpeg, generating a tantalizing optical sensation, as if Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942) was released from its frame. As the floor tilts upwards onto the walls, energizing the corners and the space’s entrances and egresses, it challenges the viewer’s dimensional perception, offering an intensified sensorial experience about body, site, and spatial conformation. Moving around the room, visitors become acutely aware of their physical bodies and more attentive to how they occupy space. For example, earlier this year, Scanavino completed an expansive floor sculpture for the main gallery of the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis, entitled Candy Crush (2014). Throughout the exhibition’s duration, it became a stage for a series of compelling public programs, from yoga to break dancing to musical concerts, opening up and challenging the ways in which we react to public art within the Museum’s walls. At The Aldrich, Imperial Texture will also offer a communal platform for a dance performance, fashion show, and pop-up nail salon.

To compose Imperial Texture, Scanavino fashioned a digital model, plotting out the overall scheme using a computer software program. With the help of a fabricator and two assistants, forty-eight 8 x 4 foot MDF panels were cut and covered with a thirty-two-tile array, an arrangement predetermined in Illustrator.

Print out for tiling panel 15 of Imperial Texture, 2014 Courtesy of the artist and Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, New York

Lemon Lick Charcoal Classic Teal Classic Teal Pomegranate Pomegranate Pomegranate Classic Teal Grabbin’ Green Grabbin’ Green Grabbin’ Green Grabbin’ Green Shocking Shocking Shocking Shocking Shocking Shocking Shocking Shocking Shocking Shocking Shocking Shocking Shocking Shocking Shocking Shocking Shocking Shocking Shocking Shocking

The entirety of the piece spans twenty-eight feet wide by forty-five feet in length and encompasses an area of seven rows of 8 x 4 foot sheets across, by five and a half rows of 8 x 4 feet sheets down, when installed. Scanavino uses Elmer’s Glue to adhere the tiles to the MDF. The composition is rooted by what look like black piers or diving boards that float and mirror each other on the walls and floor and are approximately the proportion of garment closets. All the sides of the floor’s edges are painted in safety orange so the piece radiates a glow. The choice to introduce non-institutional colors was first established in Candy Crush, although here Scanavino employs the entire range of the Armstrong color line. There are no repeating patterns within the piece, so as one circles the room, the walls appear to torque and vibrate. With no apparent internal narrative, the overall impact is simply oceanic. It is also novel on myriad levels as it stars many hallmark features, like the utilization of what he refers to as “visual anchors.”6 These include, most prominently, the triangular panels that climb the walls at four distinctive points, growing in scale, to activate the corners of the room. This high-spirited 3-D graphic effect was inspired in part by the Great Pyramids of Giza, as they, too, recede in space, but it is also a means to introduce a new primary shape into a rectilinear room with square floor tiles. But even more significant for Scanavino is the looming presence of noted influencer Richard Artschwager, who also famously used household commercial materials such as Celotex ceiling tiles and Formica to create “hybrid” objects—like Pyramidal Object (1967), situated immediately outside the South Gallery as part of the Museum’s fiftieth Anniversary exhibition, Standing in the Shadows of Love.

To intensify the viewing experience, Scanavino also introduces Peacock (2014), an animated wall relief crafted with a colorful construction-paper pulp-and-glue blend.

Applied by hand directly onto one of the gallery’s walls, its tone complements the floor.

Scanavino’s finger impressions achieve a dynamic surface dimension, further complicating the viewer’s relationship to the installation and its making. Formed over three eight-hour days by Scanavino on-site, the pulp was pre-mixed in the studio using a household blender and arrived in color-coded buckets. Scanavino’s actions are indeed strenuous; as curator Alex Gartenfeld has pointed out, he becomes “a kind of laborer, changing material without transforming it, even beautifying it, without sublimating information.”7 Scanavino first began making wall reliefs out of newspaper pulp in 2006. The date of the newspaper reflected the date when Scanavino produced the piece, reminiscent of the celebrated “Date Paintings” (1965–2014) of the conceptualist On Kawara. Scanavino’s imprints along the surface give the grey monotone atmosphere an anthropological vitality, equating the “news of the day” with the raw emotive touch of humanity. Moreover, the artist’s impulse here merges Abstract Expressionism’s one shot, all-or-nothing, actionbased ethos with the inimitable spirit of Richard Artschwager, who succinctly posited: “Sculpture is for the touch, painting for the eye. I wanted to make a sculpture for the eye and a painting for the touch.”8 Taken together, Scanavino’s works allow us entry into a mind that pulsates with color and throbs with pattern, stimulating us to rethink our relationship to the everyday elements orbiting us: the floating shapes in an indigo sky, shadows hopping across a glowing ceiling, and the rainbow hues that refract off a dewy window pane.

Amy Smith-Stewart, curator David Scanavino was born in 1978 in Denver, Colorado, and lives and works in New York City.

Green Wedge, 2006 Courtesy of the artist and Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, New York

Works in the Exhibition Imperial Texture, 2014 VCT tile, MDF, acrylic paint, glue, floor wax Dimensions variable Peacock, 2014 Archival pigmented paper pulp Dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist and Klaus Von Nichtssagend Gallery, New York

1

Ellsworth Kelly quoted in Toby Kamp, “Ellsworth Kelly: Red Green Blue,” Ellsworth Kelly: Red Green Blue Paintings and Studies, 1958-65, ex. cat. (San Diego: Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, 2002), p. 16.

Originally quoted in Roberta Bernstein, “Ellsworth Kelly’s Multipanel paintings,” Ellsworth Kelly: A Retrospective, ex. cat. (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1996), p. 51.

2

Author’s interview with the artist at his NYC studio on August 11, 2014.

3

Interview, August 11, 2014.

4

Armstrong is a commercial brand sold by Home Depot and favored by Scanavino for its varied palette and its particular grain.

5

Thomas Kellein, Donald Judd: Early Work, 1955–1968 (New York: D.A.P., 2002), p. 3. Originally published in Arts Yearbook 8, 1965.

6

Interview, August 11, 2014.

7

Introduction by Alex Gartenfeld to David Scanavino (Los Angeles: Paper Chase Press, 2012), p. 14.

8

Jennifer R. Gross, “Absolutely Original,” Richard Artschwager!, ex. cat. (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2012), p. 11.

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum advances creative thinking by connecting today’s artists with individuals and communities in unexpected and stimulating ways.

Board of Trustees Eric G. Diefenbach, Chairman; Linda M. Dugan, Vice-Chairman; William Burback, Treasurer/Secretary; Diana Bowes; Chris Doyle; Annabelle K. Garrett; Georganne Aldrich Heller, Honorary Trustee; Michael Joo; Neil Marcus; Kathleen O’Grady; Lori L. Ordover; Martin Sosnoff, Trustee Emeritus; John Tremaine

Larry Aldrich (1906–2001), Founder

Major support for Museum operations has been provided by members of The Aldrich Board of Trustees, and the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation.

Untitled (Imperial Study), 2013 Courtesy of the artist and Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, New York

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